before anything like rebellion reared its head. [Sidenote: Restoration of judicature. ] [Sidenote: Frequent councils. ] [Sidenote: Proposal to conquer Ireland. ] The history of the first year of Henry’s reign is not, however, filled up thus. He restored the administration of justice, and sent itinerant members of his judicial court to enforce the law which had been so long in abeyance. He himself learned the law as an apt scholar. Even at Bridgenorth he found time to hear suits brought before him as supreme judge; at Nottingham, whilst he was on his way from Scarborough, he threatened William Peverell with a charge of having poisoned the Earl of Chester. The very threat caused Peverell to take refuge in a monastery. He held council after council, taking advice from his elders, and making friends everywhere. In one assembly held at Wallingford after Easter he obtained the recognition of his little son William, who afterwards died, as his successor. In another, held at Winchester, at Michaelmas, he proposed that the conquest of Ireland should be attempted and a kingdom founded there for his brother William. The empress objected to this, and it was given up, at least during her life, although the English Pope, Adrian IV., by his famous Bull _Laudabiliter_, issued about this time, was already anxious to give the papal authorization to a scheme that would complete the symmetrical conformation of Western Christendom. A national expedition, Henry may have thought, would do more than anything else to consolidate the national unity which was growing rapidly into more than a name. But clearly the time was not come for England, shorn of her Northern provinces, and with the Welsh unsubdued, to attempt foreign conquest; and Henry had other states besides England to take thought for. [Sidenote: Hugh Bigot humbled, 1157. ] [Sidenote: Second coronation. ]